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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

Embedded in this Hubble Space Telescope image of nearby and
distant galaxies are 18 young galaxies or galactic building
blocks, each containing dust, gas, and a few billion stars.
Each of these objects is 11 billion light-years from Earth
and much smaller than today's galaxies.

At this distance, the universe was only about 16 percent of
its current age. The 18 young galaxies were found within an
area about 2 million light-years across, which is about the
distance between our Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.
Some astronomers believe the young objects are the ancient
building blocks of today's galaxies, because they are close
enough in space to eventually collide or merge with each other.
At 2,000 to 3,000 light-years across, each building block is
larger than a normal star cluster - as seen in our galaxy - but
smaller than a present-day galaxy, which typically is about
30,000 to 100,000 light-years wide. They are located in a
small region of sky in the northern part of the constellation
Hercules, near the border of Draco. The image covers a
diameter that is 13 times smaller than that of the full moon.

This picture is a true color image made from separate
exposures taken in blue, green, and far-red light with
the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. It required 48 orbits
around the Earth (more than one day of exposure time) to make
the observation. The green and red exposures were taken in
June 1994; the blue exposures, as well as 15 orbits of the
redshifted hydrogen line, were taken in June 1995. Compared
to the best ground-based observing sites, the sky seen from
Hubble's orbit is 2.5 to 15 times darker, and the resolution
of this image is about 10 times better. The faintest objects
visible in this image are 2 billion times fainter than what
the unaided eye can see from a dark location on Earth.